Charles
E. DoellCharles
E. DoellCharles E. Doell (1894-1983) received the local level Pugsley Medal in 1957 “in recognition of his long and distinguished service in the field of municipal parks and recreation and his valuable contribution to the Nation at large through his writing, lecturing and consultation.” He was born in Minneapolis, graduating from the University of Minnesota with a BS in civil engineering in 1916. After graduation, he served with the US Army Transportation Corps in France at the end of World War I from 1918-1919 attaining the rank of first sergeant.
He started working with the Minneapolis Park Board in 1911 as a part-time draftsman while a student at South High School. After his military service, he rejoined the park board staff as an engineer, surveyor and aide to Theodore Wirth, the founder and long-time director of the city’s park system. He served the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners for his entire professional life, moving through the ranks to hold positions as assistant engineer, assistant to the secretary, secretary and assistant superintendent, and from 1945 until his retirement at age 65 in 1959 he was superintendent. Over the years, he forged close ties with his predecessor superintendents, Theodore Wirth and Christian Bossen, and was greatly influenced by them both.
In his history, The Minneapolis Park and Recreation System 1945 – 2000, Al Wittman begins his discussion of the post World War II era with a quote from then park superintendent Charles Doell: “It became apparent that we must make some move towards providing recreation in the areas in which it was not being done well…and also to make some alteration in the kinds of improvements we made even in our old neighborhood parks.” Wittman then went on to comment, “This straightforward statement was very profound. It set the direction for the park system for the next forty years.”
In order to really understand the importance of Charles Doell’s contribution to the Minneapolis parks—and to parks in general—his tenure as superintendent should be viewed within the context of the times. More important than any given improvement or acquisition—and there were many—it was his vision meeting the demands and developments of the day that created the themes that would dominate Charles Doell’s tenure as superintendent: the post-war park system suffering from the necessity of war-time deferment of maintenance and needed improvements; a growing emphasis on recreation, changing the way people were using parks and creating the need for more and different facilities; urban renewal and the coming interstate system of highways; and the great migration to suburbia.
The Weir Survey, a comprehensive survey of the park system commissioned in 1944, identified the many needs of the Minneapolis park system. Doell had great respect for Weir and had contributed to Weir’s classic book published in 1928. Weir was field secretary of the National Recreation Association and had spent a lifetime in the study and promotion of public recreation. Doell himself, then assistant superintendent and secretary to the board, had completed significant sections of this survey, and the report reflected his thinking. Emphasizing the growing awareness of the importance of recreation, the report noted a serious need for playgrounds, quality athletic space, outdoor swimming facilities besides the lakes, and buildings that could offer opportunities for year-round recreation.
The needs listed in the Weir Survey were in addition to all the needs created by deferred maintenance and improvements during the war. The Postwar Project Committee, of which Charles Doell was a member, had been meeting during the war, enumerating all that would need to be done to both modernize facilities and keep up the growing demand. Taking the helm as superintendent of parks in 1945, Doell had his work cut out for him.
Between 1945 and 1959, programs were greatly expanded and seventeen new parks—including North Mississippi Park and 80 acres of Theodore Wirth Park—were acquired. Twenty-two existing parks were developed or redeveloped. Following Weir’s recommendations, nine temporary shelter buildings were replaced by permanent structures; nine new shelter buildings were built and two expanded. In addition, four athletic fields were developed, not the least of which was Parade Stadium. Completed in 1951, with a seating capacity of 17,000, Parade Stadium provided a gathering place for the city and was considered to be one of the finest sports centers in the nation. It hosted professional football games, major civic events such as the annual Aquatennial Parade, Friday night match-ups that featured city high school football teams, and many other events.
It should be noted that in the process of expanding the system, Doell pioneered joint park-school partnerships. Schools historically had been the main programmer of recreation activities, and as people began using parks more and more for active recreation—in contrast to passive enjoyment of green space—Doell saw that recreation was becoming more and more related to the domain of parks and that this presented an opportunity to work together. Two park-school projects (Armatage and Waite), developed in partnership from the ground up, were completed under Doell’s leadership, providing a model for similar partnerships in the years to follow.
In the superintendent’s reports throughout his tenure, Doell repeatedly reports funds falling far short of what was needed to keep up with growing demands. Postwar shortages, inflation, and then the Korean War all presented funding challenges. There were other challenges as well. In 1950, for example, the National Production Authority prohibited the construction of recreation projects to conserve materials for defense (Korean War) purposes. Thus, it was remarkable that against serious odds, Doell made great headway toward achieving his vision of a system of neighborhood parks.
Another theme that was pervasive throughout Doell’s superintendent reports is the awareness of the tremendous population growth in suburban areas and the consequent pressure particularly on the large parks in Minneapolis. The idea of a metropolitan park system for Minneapolis and St. Paul probably originated with Theodore Wirth who actually presented a plan for the western section of this to the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners in 1935, but it was too controversial. Residents of rural Hennepin County suspected that Minneapolis was out to conquer more territory, while Minneapolis residents, who already had one expensive park system saw no reason to aid outlying areas.
Believing that anything he said publicly might be misconstructed as Erying to gain more land for the Park Board, Doell limited his efforts to behind-the-scenes proselytizing among civic leaders and his own Board. In the 1950s the growth of suburbs created demands for large park areas outside of Minneapolis and with them a constituency for a metropolitan system emerged. At the same time, their population were crowding the city’s system. As Doell observed, “The Minneapolis park system is suffering from a heavy overload caused by the population of the whole metropolitan area…This large and tremendous influx of population creates a demand in many cases far beyond the capacity of the system.”
Knowing the Minneapolis parks could not sustain this ever-increasing use, he developed a plan and worked to persuade the others of the urgent need to save land and water for public recreation throughout the larger metropolitan area. Doell was a driving force behind the movement to create a metropolitan or county park system:
Today it is a fact in all of the large cities in the United States that park planners are forced with the necessity of designing park systems for the entire metropolitan area with its several and many local subdivisions. We need to provide large park areas throughout the suburban communities for the use of the entire metropolitan area.
Finding the political format to accomplish this was challenging, but from this advocacy eventually emerged the Hennepin County Park system (later its name was changed to Three Rivers Park District).
In 1953, Doell chaired a committee to explore the possibility of submitting metropolitan park legislation to the 1953 session of the Minnesota legislative, but it was not until October 1957 that the park district was created. Doell then produced a blueprint comprehensive plan for its development in 1958 in association with a member of his staff Felix Dhainin, A System of Parks for Hennepin County. This plan defined both prospective search areas for future park district acquisition and overall policies for the park district’s operation. The plan proposed acquisition of approximately 12,000 acres of land “in a fewer number of large holdings rather than many holdings of small acreage.” Upon his retirement in 1959, Doell entered private consulting and his major client was the infant Hennepin County Park Reserve District. Twenty years later, he recalled his work with the District as “the most satisfying part of my career”, more satisfying even then his 48 years with the Minneapolis Park Board.
If growing a park system and working to establish another were not enough, Doell also grappled with the nation-wide efforts at urban renewal and the establishment of interstate highways. While he saw the benefit of the new highway system, he was very aware of its potential to alter neighborhoods and their relationships to parks and to disrupt parkway flow, as well as its potential for eating up substantial amounts of park land. Doell intended to work with the highway department, but he also wished, as stated in his 1956 superintendents report, to preserve “as far as possible, the recreation and aesthetic values of park properties now in existence.” What began, however, with a stance of public spirited cooperation on the part of the board, had to become one of defense. Based on early highway plans, the park system stood to lose 309 acres. This issue would not be resolved until the sixties, but Doell’s administration laid the groundwork for the fight to follow, developing guidelines for compensation, the consideration of natural boundaries, and highway design aesthetics.
Doell was a great student of park philosophy and history, and both before and after he became superintendent he wrote extensively on those subjects. He wrote several of the chapters in L.H. Weir’s classic two-volume manual Parks: A Manual of Municipal and County Parks which was published in 1928. He collaborated with Paul J. Thompson to write the book Public Park Policies and with Gerald Fitzgerald on another book Origin and Development of Parks and Recreation. After his retirement in 1959, Doell was a visiting professor at both Michigan State University and Texas Tech University (1960 to 1966). It was while he was developing and teaching new courses at Michigan State University that he wrote his textbook, Elements of Park Administration (1963; 4th and final edition 1979). In addition to his book contributions, Doell was a consistent contributor to Parks and Recreation magazine, Recreation magazine, and on occasions contributed to other Canadian and English publications. He was also editor of the Minnesota Engineer, a publication of the Minnesota Federation of Engineering Societies.
Doell was an articulate and imaginative national leader of America’s park movement. He was well-known for his congeniality and his genuine interest in people. As a national spokesman for the park profession, Charles Doell was an adamant advocate for providing quality in public service. He insisted that park professionals should provide both a quality product and quality service within a framework of morality. "This (morality) should be of a high degree and as close to the array of the virtues of a Galahad or a Lancelot as reality will permit in both private and public business. But, it may be observed that while desire for high quality is prevalent in private business, it is essential in public business."
Doell was president of the American Institute of Park Executives in 1957, and was instrumental in extending the Institute’s service and influence to park systems throughout the United States. He was prominent in the early affairs of the National Recreation and Park Association, and in the founding of the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration.